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| Thanks to a Wikimedia Sverige official, Wikipedia accused Israel of a war crime on its main page |
Last June, when the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations complained about Wikipedia denigrating the ADL, it was rudely blown off.
Ever wonder why Wikipedia's parent company, the Wikimedia Foundation, treats Jews and Israel with contempt? One clue comes by examining the kind of people who staff the dozens of affiliates, chapters and other offshoots bankrolled by the Foundation.
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| John Cummings |
Wikimedia "chapters" get grants from the Wikimedia Foundation but are legally separate from them. The corporate veil is designed to insulate the Foundation from liability for the skewed, propaganda-laced content of Wikipedia and its counterparts abroad, while funding them and letting them use the Wikimedia "brand" in their fundraising.
The multiple layers of corporate insulation also give the WMF deniability when it comes to the activities of chapter executives like Cummings.
On Wikipedia, Cummings is an active member of the "Wikipedia Flood" of anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and often antisemitic editors who have turned every Wikipedia article on Israel and the Gaza war into an outlet for pro-Hamas propaganda.
The most skillful and experienced of them, such as Cummings, create articles, promoting them on Wikipedia's main page, to advance the cause.
Cummings has a suitable pedigree for his anti-Israel activities. For six years he was "Wikimedian in Residence" at UNESCO, the infamous Israel-hating United Nations unit. "I work with UNESCO and other UN organisations to have the understanding, skills and relationships to be able to share their knowledge on Wikipedia," he pompously boasts on his LinkedIn page.
In his current post he helps UN outfits use Wikipedia for publicity purposes. Or as he puts it: "I help UN agencies and other international organisations share their knowledge and content on Wikipedia." There's lots of synergy between his day job and his hobby of bashing Israel on Wikipedia, needless to say.
Cummings' crowning achievement for the Wikipedia Flood is a blatantly one-sided article, which he created in April 2024, whose sole purpose is to spread the blood libel that Israel is guilty of the war crime of "ecocide."
He not only created the article but was the driving force in putting it on Wikipedia's main page. The pro-Hamas poison appeared there on May 29th.
Here is how the article appeared when he created it on April 7, 2024.
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| John Cummings' Israel-bashing 'environmental impact' article, as he wrote it in April 2024 |
Article leads are very important, because many readers don't read beyond them, and this one is as "neutral" as a vampire bat. It is totally one-sided, making it seem as if Israel is laying waste to Gaza just for the hell of it. It makes no reference to Hamas and no reference to the thousands of Hamas incendiary arson balloons, dating back years, that deliberately set ablaze thousands of acres of Israeli farmlands near Gaza, and the fires set by Hezbollah in northern Israel over the past few months.
The "highlight" of the article as Cummings created it, and pretty much how it reads now, is the "ecocide" libel, an accusation that Israel is deliberately laying waste to Gaza's ecology just for kicks.
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| The 'Ecocide' section of Cummings' article and his footnoted sources. |
Cummings sourced his pro-Hamas propaganda diatribe almost entirely to the anti-Israel British organ The Guardian and to "Truthout," a far-left blog. As a self-published blog, its use is discouraged to source articles, but sourcing rules mean little to the Wikipedia Flood.
Just two days after creating the grotesquely slanted article, Cummings pushed for it to be featured as a "Did you know" item on the main page, framing it as a war crimes accusation against Israel in Wikipedia's voice.
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| Cummings framed his "DYK" nomination as an accusation of "ecocide." |
As you can see from the "Did you know" nomination discussion, the article received immediate pushback from an editor, who chastised the lead section of the article for "hyperbole" and for failing Wikipedia's "neutral point of view" policy. But eventually the article and the main page "DYK" were worded exactly as Cummings wanted.
In addition to this impressive achievement, Cummings has generated puffy articles on minor organizations with anti-Israel purposes. To boost the visibility of the latter and help them with their fundraising, he ensures that they are publicized on the main page as "DYK" items.
He did that with an obscure activist named Mira El Helbawi and her organization Connecting Humanity, who raise money from naive westerners to give "ordinary Gazans" (and not Hamas, heaven forbid!) eSim cards. Likewise he made sure that Wikipedia gave a main-page plug to "Artists4Ceasefire," a group of anti-Israel Hollywood types who pushed for a Hamas victory via ceasefire in October, while the blood was still coagulating in southern Israel.
The "Connecting Humanity" main page plug, which appeared on April 21, was a kind of two-for-one special, simultaneously promoting that dubious Gaza charity while also giving a shout-out to Al Jazeera "journalist" Hind Khoudary, a Hamas operative who turned over Gaza peace activists to the terror organization.
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| Cummings publicized a dubious Gaza charity and a Hamas operative on Wikipedia's main page |
The Wikipedia article on Khoudary, linked in the DYK item, does not mention her despicable conduct of course. She betrayed her fellow Gazans months before the DYK item appeared, so Cummings was perfectly aware of her odious actions when he proposed mentioning Khoudary in the DYK. The idea originated with "Makeandtoss," a fellow member of the Wikipedia Flood.
It's not clear from the Wikimedia Foundation's opaque, vaguely worded Form 990 how much of its immense contributor dollars flow into Cummings' bank account or into Wikimedia Sverige for that matter. Funding of chapters is lumped in with other grants.
Even without Cummings, there were already plenty of reasons to tell the Wikipedia Foundation to go away when it comes begging for money at the end of every year. Knowing that your money goes to pay the salary of an anti-Israel activist is icing on the cake.
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